The highlights of the field of autonomous driving will be even more exciting.
Text/Shanshan Xu
01
Xiaopeng accelerated its impact on the European market
Xiaopeng Motors recently announced that it will expand into the European market, establish sales and service partnerships in the Netherlands and Sweden, and the brand retail experience store will open in Sweden and the Netherlands in the first quarter of 2022.
Short comments
Becoming an international automobile brand is the biggest goal of China's traditional car companies and even new car-making forces.
The backwardness of the era of traditional fuel vehicles does not mean that electric vehicles will continue to lag behind. On the contrary, based on the rapid detection and response to the market demand for smart electric vehicles, the new domestic car-making forces have successively announced the performance of the red and the news of going to sea.
In January this year, Xiaopeng Automobile delivered a total of 12,922 electric vehicles, an increase of 115% year-on-year, and delivered more than 10,000 vehicles for five consecutive months. By the end of January, the cumulative delivery volume of Xiaopeng Automobile exceeded 150,000 units.
In the first echelon of new car-making forces, Xiaopeng Automobile also maintains a leading pace in exports. Following its entry into the Norwegian market at the end of 2020, Xiaopeng Motors earlier said it would expand into other European markets including Sweden, Denmark and the Netherlands.
Judging from the current information, Xiaopeng Automobile also intends to open the European market by opening offline stores and developing sales and service networks.
Like Weilai Automobile, Xiaopeng Motors also has high hopes for overseas markets. "Half of the orders come from China, half from overseas" is Xiaopeng Automobile's vision for the future, or a goal.
Although this process is bound to be bumpy, just like the "S-shaped curve" theory of new technologies, the introduction period will grow slowly, and the maturity period will show exponential growth.
The brand development process is basically the same, behind the explosion of popularity is countless ready dark nights, especially for high-value products such as cars.
02
Musk was promoted to academician
On February 10, the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) announced a new list of academicians, and Tesla and SpaceX CEO Musk were officially elected as members of the National Academy of Engineering.
I still remember that when Time magazine selected Musk as the "Person of the Year" last year, the response in the industry was more questionable than affirmative.
Time magazine described Musk at the time as, "As the richest man in the world, he doesn't have a house and has been selling his property lately." He puts satellites into orbit and uses solar energy to serve millions of households. He drives a car of his own making that requires no gasoline and hardly a driver. With a flick of his finger, the stock market will skyrocket or plummet. Every word he said was put on the lips of a large group of fans. When he took his business global, he also dreamed of colonizing Mars. Square chin face, indomitable". (World Wide Web)
A few days ago, Musk was elected a member of the National Academy of Engineering for space exploration technology company SpaceX. The reason given by NAE is that Musk has "made breakthroughs in the design, engineering, manufacturing and operation of reusable launch vehicles and sustainable transportation and energy systems."
This time, doubts also swept in. The constant tweets and rebellious rhetoric have brought Musk's image in the public mind closer and closer to that of an Internet celebrity.
But it is undeniable that SpaceX has achieved achievements in the past two years, whether it is a manned space mission or a starship project that is about to make its first flight, Musk as the leader of the people are indispensable.
U.S. investment bank Morgan Stanley has pointed out in the past that SpaceX's valuation is expected to become even higher in the coming years, perhaps surpassing Tesla. At the same time, another report believes that Musk is expected to become the world's first trillionaire with SpaceX.
It is expected that the commercial value of SpaceX will be more and more affirmed, but Musk, as a businessman, has not fulfilled the business of the fulfillment, and there is no doubt that winning this award will be questioned by the outside world.
Tesla reportedly achieved a net profit of $5.5 billion in 2021, paying only $9 million in taxes to the company's state, while the federal tax bill was as low as zero.
03
Chinese enterprises rank among the best
On February 10, local time, the California Transportation Administration (DMV) released a new 2021 full-year autonomous driving road test data, and China and the United States ranked first in the ranking.
First, let's briefly explain the specifics of this report.
In terms of total test miles for the whole year, Google's Waymo continued to hold the first position in the list with an advantage of more than 2.3258 million miles, followed by GM's Crusie, and Ma Zhixing ranked third, with a total road test mileage of about 305,600 miles. If you look at the average test mileage of the car, the top three are changed to Yuan Rong Kaixing, Xiaoma Zhixing and Crusie.
According to the MPD of automatic driving results, AutoX ranked first with 50108 miles, Didi ranked third, and the TOP13 also includes 5 other Chinese companies such as Wenyuan Zhixing, Yuanrong Qixing, Xiaoma Zhixing, Baidu Apollo and Qingzhou Zhihang.
MPD (Miles Per Disengagement) is one of the most intuitive indicators of the driving level of self-driving cars, which can be roughly explained as the number of miles driven by self-driving cars before being artificially interfered with. It is generally believed that the higher the MPD value, the higher the level of autonomous driving.
In this report card, self-driving companies in China and the United States are ranked first. In the TOP13, Chinese autonomous driving companies occupy 7 seats, showing the potential and space for China's development in the field of autonomous driving technology.
It is worth mentioning that earlier last year, the governor of California signed a bill requiring that all self-driving cars should achieve carbon zero emissions from 2030. This means that autonomous vehicle fleets need to transition to electrification.
For a long time, the technological development of the global autonomous driving industry has been led by American companies, and the US legislation and supporting systems are relatively more perfect. So California is also home to the world's major autonomous driving companies.
However, with the blessing of the advantages of electrification and autonomous driving technology, Chinese autonomous driving companies may have the opportunity to seize the opportunities of the times. A more exciting story is playing out in the world's first state on autonomous driving.